Blog Engage Community Blog – Page 9

12 Tips to Speed up your Blog in 2023

There was once a time when a page used to load. The days of the dial-up internet connection when people knew that they had to wait before an internet page will load on their browsers. That was before the broadband and the fiber connections came into the picture. With the 5G on the rise, page loading should not even be a factor now.

And yet, if your blog is slow loading, none will have the patience to keep it on their tabs.

Here, in this article, we will discuss several ways in which we can speed up the loading time of our blogs.

1. Get rid of the useless plugins: There are so many plugins available today that one can pretty much get anything done with the help of the plugins. Several of these plugins are installed and activated, but since there isn’t any real use of those plugins, many of these plugins just sit there and slow things up.

Look for the plugins that you have on your blog and if there is no good reason to keep them, just delete them and clear up the space.

2. Make JavaScripts smaller: There are scripts in your blogging system that are bulky, the codes aren’t clean and have white space in them. All this is too technical to hear, however there’s no reason to worry because there are options in the wordpress that can fix and minify Js. Simply look for plugins that does this, and use it to minify JavaScript and CSS.

3. Use Content Delivery Networks: CDNs are on the rise and there are plenty of options available to choose from. Think about it, if content is delivered from a server which is close to you geographically, won’t it be fast? This is exactly what a CDN does.

4. Lower the Home Page Size: If your homepage has too much of content, from multiple posts, to archives of posts, comments and categories then it is time to cut the home page clutter. Keep a small amount of posts on the homepage with only a few lines worth of content and read more buttons.

5. Resize and Compress your Images: Huge images with insane detailing, and then scaling them on the browsers are often a big reason of slow loading of sites. This can be easily remedied by using a plugin that compress the images. Along with that, resize the images while loading, that way the images won’t need to be scaled to fit on the browser.

6. Change your Webhost: Often times, a slow loading site isn’t the fault of the web master but the web host. Some cheaper webhosts are just crappy and it is best to stay away from those. If you are on a good webhost but your loading speed is still slow, then perhaps you can consider upgrading your plans from shared hosting to VPS or to a dedicated server if the budget holds.

7. Remove unwanted redirects: When a blog is run for a long time, many pages are deleted and re-directed. If the list of re-directed pages is getting huge, it is time to remove some of those re-directs. Check the re-directs that are no longer needed, perhaps those pages are not important anymore? Start looking for such re-directs and get rid of them.

8. Get a fast loading wordpress theme: There are an insane number of wordpress themes available on the internet to choose from. However, not all themes are good when it comes to page loading speeds. Look for a minimalistic theme which is coded well. If possible, go for a paid theme from a reputed developer.

9. Upgrade WordPress: WordPress is an open source blogging system that has a very strong developer base. These developers keep throwing new updates every now and then. Make sure to upgrade the wordpress system as soon as a new update is available. Along with that, make sure to update the theme and all the plugins that are installed to keep things compatible and secure.

10. Stop others to HotLink your Images: This is a common internet practice where people simply load the images from your server and display them on their websites. All they need to do is to add a piece of code and your images will start appearing on their sites and posts. There are ways to stop this so that people can’t simply use up your bandwidth and slow down your website.

11. Remove Popups and other ads: If you are running too many ads, especially if the ads are using javascript and other codes that slow down your site, then it is time to get rid of those ads. Advertisements often fetch data from 3^rd party sites, which slows down the page loading further. Having ads from multiple providers also affects page loading times.

Look for the ads that pay more and keep it, the rest low paying ones are best to be removed. Remember that ads fight for your reader’s attention and clicks, so no point allowing the lower paying ads to compete with the higher paying ones and in the process lowering the speed of your website.

12. Fix your Codes: When you run a blog for a long time, change and remove themes, add and remove plugins and do a lot of other things, ultimately everything leaves some errors and unwanted data on your database. These are codes for your backend that most bloggers who aren’t code friendly, does not even bother to look.

However, the problem is that even though these code and database errors aren’t visible, they still slow down a website. This is where you need to look for a plug-in that can fix database tables and get rid of any unwanted data in it.

Note: Make sure to take a full files and database backup before trying out the tips, as some of these tips can have some impact on your blog.

Everyone likes a fast loading website. Even you as the owner of your own blog don’t want to wait for ages for your blog posts to load. Fast loading sites aren’t just a requirement and necessity; it’s a habit that is taken for granted now. If your blog does not load in the same instant, your readers will close the tab and move on.

14 Tips to get started with LinkedIn Content Marketing for 2023

For ages, LinkedIn has been considered as a place to get a new job. Some even now, thinks along the same lines. However, one should take into account that LinkedIn has over 900 Million users. This number is fairly huge, which makes this social site, a top-tier site and even without a niche focus, this network is huge.

LinkedIn does have a Niche focus though, and it is carrier and profession. Getting a job or talking about it is an important part of being on LinkedIn. This network can be leveraged in several ways and there are plenty of benefits that can come out of it.

Here, we will discuss several ways to do content marketing on LinkedIn.

1. Setup your Profile: A LinkedIn profile needs to be fully filled. The attention span of people of LinkedIn isn’t just short, it is also sharp. These aren’t your friends and family, these are professionals who are skimming through several profiles at the same time, trying to get something important. If you want their attention, at least fill up the complete profile with full and correct details.

2. Get a Picture: A professional picture is much different than a regular one. It has to be in your work dress, the face must take up most part of the image and it has to be a really close image. Even facial expression matters, it should be serious, yet happy and smiling. It is a lot to fit in a single image, but after all an image is worth a thousand words.

3. Display your Skills: You are on LinkedIn looking for a job or business on a relevant sector, your skills will surely matter. List down your skills in details so that your profile looks like a pro.

4. Follow and Connect: The entire success of a content marketing campaign depends on how much influential your profile is. If you have plenty of people who are following you then the content that you plan to share will go as far. Your connection matters and to grow this follower base, you simply need to follow and connect with more people.

5. Endorse others and receive the same: As a blogger and a content marketer, you must have discovered the power of reciprocity. This works in every single aspect of online business. Here, simply endorse others who are in your contact list and whom you know somewhat. Several of them will do the same for you and immediately you will have plenty of endorsements to show.

6. Write posts on LinkedIn Pulse: Recently, LinkedIn has rolled out the long-form content creation feature for everyone. Now, just like Medium or any other blogging platform, one can add articles on LinkedIn. However, other networks don’t have 900M users, so the potential of blogging on LinkedIn and building a huge audience is pretty strong.

7. Share trending content on LinkedIn: Now that you have started following people on LinkedIn and getting many followers in return, it is important to keep feeding this audience base with great content. Creating long form articles is one way, but one can’t create enough articles every day. This is the reason why sharing good content from other people is important.

Keep browsing through the LinkedIn feed and whenever you find something worth sharing, simply share it on your LinkedIn timeline.

8. Join Relevant Groups: Groups is a very strong and yet, totally under rated feature of LinkedIn. Those that have discovered this feature is making a good use of it. This is where one can join a relevant group, share own and other people’s content, connect and comments to get involved and ultimately bring some of that audience to your profile and turn them into loyal followers.

9. Post Comments: There are plenty of places on LinkedIn where one can post a comment. Every content that is shared in the feed has the option to make a comment. Just read the articles that are shared in the feed and post a relevant comment.

10. Get Recommended: This is a higher level of user feedback where people aren’t just endorsing but they are actively recommending you. This too will only work efficiently if you are recommending others.

11. Add LinkedIn buttons on your blog and website: Getting your content shared more and more on networks like LinkedIn requires some push from your side as well. If you have a blog then it is important to have a LinkedIn share button and a profile badge added to your blog so that your readers can connect with you on LinkedIn and share your content flawlessly.

12. Fix writing mistakes: We are talking about a professional network where you need to look good. It does not really require mentioning that a typo can really make you look bad on a serious network like this. There are many tools to fix this, but the best way to go about it is to hire a proof-reader who can not only fix your errors but also improve your over all content details.

13. This isn’t Facebook: Don’t post personal details and life updates. People are professional here, even if you have friends and family on LinkedIn, they too don’t want to see too much of your personal details here.

There can be exceptions here though, depending on what you want to achieve on this network. If connecting on a human and emotional level is required then one needs to plan their content well.

14. Update daily: Just like any other network, here too regular updates matters. The updates need to be regular, perhaps multiple times a day but spaced out well. Set a scheduler if you can’t post updates every single day. That way, you just need to spend a few hours in setting up some relevant updates which will be posted a few times a day, spaced out well and you don’t need to worry about it for weeks or even months if you have spaced it well.

LinkedIn is, at the end of the day, a social network, and a pretty huge one at that. Just like any other social network, the basic rules apply. You have to network, connect and follow. You have to reach out and make your ideas and thoughts heard. The difference is in the approach. LinkedIn is just that – professional.

13 Reasons why an Online Business Needs a Blog

Every online business, no matter what niche they are in, always has this one fundamental common question. It is to have a blog or not. There are plenty of benefits to run a blog alongside the rest of your business. While there are costs to run and maintain a blog, it has its own benefits as well. Much depends on how well the blog section is handled.

A profitable blog does not only mean the blog section bringing in revenue from sources like advertisements and sponsored posts, it can also promote the actual product or services of the company and increase sales.

Here, in this article, we will discuss several reasons why every business needs a blog.

1. Ads vs. Content: Most people will prefer content over ads. This makes the basis for all marketing activities. PPC is expensive and if content based marketing not only lowers down the expense but it is also a more preferred way to be marketed, then surely content will win any day.

Content of all formats can be used in every advertisement. Instead of the boring and overly promotional advertisement, content can be supplemented in the form of content marketing and happy customers can be obtained.

2. Easy to get SEO going: Content is always easy to SEO instead of the regular product pages. Search engines will prefer to see more content pages than a list of products and services without enough information. Every SEO tip and trick will work better on blog pages with good content, compared to any other format.

3. Build an Audience: Blog posts are great when it comes to building an audience. Content communicates more effectively and the readers are able to connect with the content, even emotionally, which builds a strong bond with the brand that stays for a long time. In time, this audience will become loyal to the business and support it in all possible ways.

4. Email Leads: Blog section with regular readers and search engine traffic can be converted easily into email leads by using a number of email collection ideas. Display popup, exit intents and lead magnets can catch email ids of the readers and then use a number of auto-responders and make good use of these leads.

5. Active Community in the Comments: The comments section of a blog is perhaps the biggest space that a site can have for user generated content. This is the heart and soul of a blog where the dedicated communities of the commentators responds and discuss the blog posts in detail.

6. Builds Trust: Building trust is always a challenge for any business. However, it becomes relatively easy when a business has an active blog section. Good content, along with hundreds of people responding in the comments and posting their support for the business is a strong factor that speaks volumes about a brand’s trust score.

7. Links to blog posts are shared easily on Social Media: In the social media, content is always shared and liked. The same hardly happens when someone shares the boring product pages or advertisements.

Content, especially if relevant and catchy images are created, then it will always have an impact on the social media. People will like such content and share it with their friends and family. Genuinely good and relevant content is selflessly shared on the social media.

8. Easily get pages indexed: Search engines like to store as many good quality content pages as possible. A blog section has many blog posts and all of these posts have high quality and unique content. This is exactly what the search engines want and they will index all of these pages at top speed.

9. Repurpose Content: Use the blog content for Email Marketing and other platforms to make the most out of the existing content. Slide share, YouTube, eBooks etc. are ways to change the format of a post and then use it in several different ways.

10. Blog Posts attracts more links: Most people like to avoid commercial sites and product pages when it comes to linking. But the same people will like to link to content pages. If the content is of good quality then it will surely attract links.

Linking to quality content pages is a common practice where the bloggers want to send their readers to similar resources that are of good quality. This way, the blog posts of the site can get genuine and organic links whose value and juice will flow through the entire website.

11. Infographics: In the blog section, one can create high quality info graphics that can be posted as a resource that explains the product or the idea well. Such high quality graphics are great for the readers and along with that; these graphics also gain a lot of backlinks as people like to publish them with a link back to the original source.

12. Become an Expert: A website can be great, fast loading, great design, good content and products and yet, it will never become an authority on its niche. However, if the blog section is active and good content is consistently produced then the blogger will be considered as an industry expert. Such experts are often invited for interviews and roundups which further boost the image of the blogger.

13. Niche Research: When writing blog posts, one needs to research and read plenty of content which boosts the understanding of the niche. This research for adding new posts constantly, forces the blogger to read a lot of niche content. In time, this will further increase the knowledge and understanding of the niche and along with that, there will be a lot of competitor research done as well.

There are many benefits of running a content system along with the website. If this blog is run with a lot of hard work and research, in time this niche content will become an authority which will attract links, social media shares etc. Surely, blogging is hard work, but it has its merits.

18 Tips to Get Rid of Writers Block

Writer’s block is a terrible condition. It is a feeling of being stuck, like nothing can come out of your pen, no matter how hard you try. The blank document will keep starring at you until you give up and get yourself occupied with something else.

This condition might last for months and sometimes even after trying everything, you still might not be able to get out of it. Even the best of the authors has to go through this at some point in their lives. However, if you keep at time, it will eventually go away and you will have your writing fluency back once more.

Here are some of the ideas that you can try to get rid of writer’s block.

1. Write something else: Sometimes when we keep writing on a particular niche, we run out of creative ideas. At times like this, it is best to start writing about something else. Such content might not be a good fit for the niche blog, but to get ones writing flow back, changes in niche is important. Guest posting on various other niches might be an option to try out this tip.

2. Take a vacation: Too much hard work can exhaust anyone. If you have been planning on a vacation then it might just be the right time to take one. Staying out of the regular work schedule will allow charging of your batteries and your creative juices will start to flowing ones again.

3. Drink Tea or Coffee: One needs to get some caffeine to open up the brain doors. With a fresh cup of tea or coffee, new and creative ideas will start to flow which allows us to write something new.

4. Change your writing corner: Often times, we keep sitting at the same place, on the same chair, starring at the same background of the desk and it starts to seem boring. Change your place; get a new corner, preferably one with a window and a good outdoor view.

5. Use offline notebook: This is a common habit of online writers to open up the notepad or wordpad and start scribbling down notes and ideas. However, when you are fighting writers block, try using an off line notepad and rather sitting on your computer desk, roam around while jotting down points and ideas.

6. Get up early in the morning: Most of the good ideas and creative outbreaks happen in the morning. If you get up late, you get the same old dull day and nothing new happens. Try setting up the alarm a bit earlier in the morning, at first it might seem difficult and getting up early is a habit and if you are able to keep it going, it will soon become a part of your live.

7. Read books: Not everyone’s favorite book is Harry Potter, so whatever you like to read, be it friction, cartoons, action, just get a book that you like and start reading.

8. Talk to a Friend: Off line connections are important in life. It helps to keep you away from the cyber world and get a real conversation going in the real world. Talk to your old friends and talk about something other than online business and stuff.

9. Join an offline Course: It is good to be among people and the best way to get you busy and get surrounded by plenty of people is to join an institute and start a course. This will keep yourself busy and you won’t have to worry about writer’s block. Talking and staying active and getting yourself occupied with something else will trigger the removal of writer’s block.

10. Get out of your comfort zone: If your daily routine is to get up, get ready and sit on a computer and start writing, then it is time to change this monotonous life and do something different that gives you a challenge.

11. Read your old blog posts: If you have been a writer for sometime then chances are that you might have written some good content that you are proud of. Take out some time and start reading those articles. The best way to get motivated is to read something that you have written yourself and you are proud of it.

12. Use Quora: Look for random questions on topics that you are comfortable giving advices. This feeling of being an expert allows you to write on various topics and the more you write, the easier it becomes to get rid of your mental block.

13. Stop worrying about perfection: Thinking too much about the way the article is shaping up is a bad idea when you want to get rid of the block. Just keep writing without worrying too much about perfection. One can always proof-read at a later time; the important thing is to get the writing flow back again.

14. Don’t let the document be blank: Sometimes, even a few words matters. The blank document is a curse in itself; don’t let it be blank, type down a few words. The title, the opening, a few points, let it be anything except blank.

15. Listen to Music: Good music helps recharge your brain. When you feel good, you are able to write more freely. This helps to release pressure and the thinking process becomes creative ones again.

16. Write on a deadline: Take up some freelancing content writing work which is on a deadline. This pressure to deliver content on time helps to push yourself further and in the process the writer’s block dies down and your shackles are finally broken and your block is lifted.

17. Yoga and Meditation: Writing is a creative work and for that a healthy and peaceful mind is the number one thing that is needed. Yoga and meditation helps keep your brain healthy and boost creative thoughts in your mind. This way, slowly and steadily, the mind starts to work more freely and creative ideas start to flow once more.

18. Just Keep Writing: When you are fighting a block, it is important to keep writing as much as possible, without worrying about grammar, sentence structure and other details. Such content might require more editing at a later time, but for the time being, it is a good idea to get the blocks lifted.

Writer’s block can be cured by various methods. One needs to get his own writing flow back and for that one has to keep trying every tip and trick in the book until it works.

The Blog Commenting Guide for 2023 and Beyond

In the past, there has been plenty of high quality blogs that grew with the help of just one marketing channel, which is blog commenting. This strategy was very powerful and it was alone enough to get a new blog established in absolutely no time.

The times have changed and blog commenting might not be as effective, but still it is one of the finest metric that tells you how active a blog is. Other metrics like traffic signals, social shares etc. can be misguiding but since blog commenting takes a lot of hard work and effort, it isn’t easy to fake. So even today, the activity of a blog can be easily analyzed by checking its comments section.

Here, we will discuss several tips, rules and ideas to post better blog comments.

1. Read the post in full: Several times we have seen commentators rushing for posting their comments without reading the full post. Only skimming through a few paragraph isn’t enough to get the idea of the whole post, which is one of the main reason why some comments look weak and repetitive.

Usually an average blog post is over 1k to 3k words which won’t take more than 20+ minutes to read. At max, it can take half an hour, which is still not a lot of time. Taking the time to read the full post will also allow your brain to form a good comment in response.

2. Get Gravatar: Most wordpress blogs are systems that display the Gravatar image as your profile photo which is visible next to your name in the comments section. By default, your image will be a blank one, so you have to claim your email id in Gravatar to set your profile picture. This is a very important step because no one will consider a comment genuine if the commentator does not even have a profile pic next to their comments.

3. Mention the author by name: Every blog has an author. Sometimes there are multiple authors, some posts might be written by guest authors. When posting a comment, it is important to greet the blog author, the details of which are mostly available in the author bio or the blog’s about us section. This is a simple way to connect with the author and make a lasting impression.

4. Post a thoughtful comment: Now that you are ready to write and post your comment it is important to take out some time and pen down a really good comment. Take your time, if required edit it a bit and make sure that your actual comment is thoughtful, insightful, adds value and is overall a good comment.

5. Use your name, Not Keywords: In the name field, we find some people who always try to get some keywords added along with their name, their website’s name or they keep stuffing as many keywords as possible. The name field is for adding your name, not your brand or your website.

6. Don’t be negative: When adding a comment, no matter how much you disagree, never post a negative comment. If you disagree so much that you can’t add a positive comment, then simply skip commenting on that post. There is absolutely no benefit of being negative, just post good, helpful and useful comments.

7. Don’t drop links in the comments: Talking about terrible things that one can do while commenting is dropping links in the comments body. Most blogs allow website field in the comments, some even allow additional links in the form of comluv etc. Use those fields for adding your site; make sure that no links are posted in the comments body.

8. Always comment on the latest post: Sometimes when we find a new blog where we haven’t commented yet, we think of it as a gold mine and start adding as many comments in as many posts we find on the homepage. But it is a negative strategy as the blog owner will get flooded with multiple comments and might consider it as an act of spam. Best to just comment on the latest post and wait for the blog owner to add a new post before you add another comment.

9. Share the post after commenting: Once you have added your comment, take a moment to share the post on the social media. In the comment too, mention that you will share the post on the social media. Certain sites like Twitter sends notification of the tweet if you have included the blog author’s twitter id in the tweet. This way, the author of the blog will be updated about your comment and this will speed up the approving of your comment.

10. Subscribe to posts: It is good to be among the first few commentators and to do that, one need to subscribe to the blog feed so that whenever a new post is added, you get a notification.

As soon as you get a notification, make sure to be the first person to post the comment. There are many benefits of being the first commentator, for example it will give you more exposure. The blog author will notice you if you consistently post the first comment whenever a new post is published.

11. Reply to comments: The comments section of a blog is a community place which is open for discussions. Feel free to keep the conversation going and make a new reply to the reply of the author on your comment. If you find any other comment useful or it can start a conversation, feel free to post a reply to it.

12. Keep a list of active blogs: Now that you are commenting actively, it is important to make sure that your time is utilized more effectively. Make a list of blogs that approves your comment quickly and values your comment. These are the blogs where you have to comment, every time a new post is added. Do note that some blogs don’t approve comments or let them rot in the pending queue, try avoiding such blogs.

Blog commenting might not be today, what it was in the past but even now, it is worth doing. It is the fastest way to build genuine connections with other bloggers which is after all, the start for further collaborations like guest posting and much more.

21 Easy Link Building Tips for your Website

For an online business, backlinks are the greatest assets. If there’s enough quality and authority sites linking to your domain then your online presence will get a boost in the rankings, else there’s plenty of new and useless sites out there that no one visits as they aren’t visible in the search engines.

There are many ways to get good links for your website but the links that are earned, or gained by good means, lasts longer and in time, they become even more valuable. Links created by cheaper and easier methods usually gets removed in time.

Here, we will discuss 21 high quality link building tips.

1. Guest Blogging: Guest Blogging is perhaps the easiest way to get started with link building. As a blogger you are already contributing to your blog which means you are producing content on a regular basis. Along with this, start a small outreach campaign and reach out to your fellow bloggers and ask them if they want a guest post. If they agree, create some more content and send them an article and see if they publish it.

2. Blog Comments: Commenting on other blogs is a great way to build relevant links. This technique can also be scaled by searching for blog posts on topics that are relevant to your article title. Then hunt for blogs that are dofollow in the comments section.

3. Forum Posts: There are some forums that allow signature links. If you search enough, you might even find some forums that allow posting of relevant links along with the answers to the threads.

4. Sponsored Posts: If you want to pay your way in link building then sponsored and paid posts are good ways to quickly build links. In such an arrangement, one can ask for keyword rich anchors and build strong backlinks that are both relevant and targeted.

5. Social media content sharing sites: There are certain social sites on the internet that allow user generated content. Here, all you need to do is to share some content that you already have on your blog. These shared snippets of your content will get you backlinks to your own articles.

6. Web 2.0 Posting: There’s plenty of web2.0 websites on the internet that allow posting of content. These sites are usually free to join, all you have to do is to register and start posting.

7. Creating Accounts on Websites: There are some sites on the internet that allows us to signup. Whatever be the actual reason behind this signup, which depends on site to site, but for our benefit such sites usually have a profile page which is visible to the public. If such a profile page has a link field that you can fill up, then it is a great way to get a quick link to your website.

8. Making free websites: Some services on the internet allow us to build a free website, usually hosted by a sub-domain, which is hosted on the service provider’s domain. Since it is free to create and takes only a minute to set it up, these are easy ways to get a backlink.

9. Blogging on Hosted services: Medium for example is a top place to start a blog. It is so good that some people don’t blog on their domain anymore; rather they keep their main blog on Medium. There are plenty of other sites that provide the same service and can be used to add content and build backlinks from within the posts.

10. Sharing on Social Media: If you actively share your content on as many social media sites as possible, you will see that certain smaller social sites does provide do follow links and in time there will be quite a few social sites which will be actively linking to your content.

11. Helping out Journalists: This service HARO is an excellent way to build links where you help out a journalist with content related to your niche or your expertise and in return, the journalist sometimes link to your website.

12. Participating in Roundups: Taking part in a roundup pretty much gets you a link and in most cases, this link is usually do follow. If you have participated in a roundup that is hosted on a strong blog then your earned link will be pretty good.

13. Giving Interviews: There are several sites that publish interviews and in most cases, one can link to a variety of content pages from within the interview.

14. Outreach for Broken Links: Every site that is running for some time has plenty of broken links but like most site owners, people tend to ignore this issue. If you are able to present your resource as an alternative to the resource which is missing or is broken – say a competitor is out of business, in such a case, there’s plenty of broken links that you can fill in for.

15. Infographics: People like to use good graphics and if you have good quality infographics and you are allowing people to re-publish it in their sites then there will be plenty of site owners who will be happy to give you a back link in return.

16. Provide Testimonials: If you browse through the internet, you will find plenty of sites that are publishing testimonials and if they can publish and link out for testimonials, you might get a shot at it as well.

17. Link Out: There are many bloggers who link back to those that are linking to them. This is sort of like they say, thank you for linking. You will be surprised to see how many bloggers like to return the kindness.

18. Web Directories: Directories still work as a means to build links, but rather than over doing it, look for directories that are on your niche and carefully select the ones from which you want a back link.

19. Build resourceful Content: This is one of those tips where you build it and they will come. But even if they don’t come, they can be brought by various means. The bottom line remains that you still need the resource.

20. Ask for Links: Sometimes, all you need to do is to ask. Just ask for it and if your content is good, you might get a link.

21. Press Release: This is one of those old hat tips and even now press release works for building links. If your news has that edge, then your release might get viral and then you will get very strong links.

There are still many more ways to build links and most of them work in some capacity. However, we have only listed a handful to get started. These tips will be enough to build links for the long term and such links lasts longer than most other type of links.

20 LifeStyle Sub Niches to Start a Blog in 2023

The profit is in the niche. But that only rises as many question as it answers. How niche is too niche? Should we start a micro niche blog with 4 long tail keywords in our domain, or look for a secret niche that none knows about.

The best approach, if you aren’t in the mood of too much experimentation is to start a niche blog on a small sub niche of a larger niche. For example, today we are going to cover the lifestyle niche, which is the broader niche topic. We will discuss at least 20 smaller sub-niches of this main topic where one can start an evergreen content blog and run it with fresh content for years to come.

Here’s the top 20 lifestyle sub-niches to start a blog:

1. Travel: This is a huge niche, from backpacking to solo travel, visiting different countries or taking a car or an RV and moving around the country side, there is so much to explore, write and publish. This niche can be monetized easily with sponsored content as hotels and different kind of stays are looking for various places to advertise.

2. Food: Lifestyle niche is all about fun and living. Explore different kind of foods, be it street food or restaurants or even fast food joints, one can eat good food where ever it is available. Cooking and recipes can be covered under this niche as well and that makes this niche really deep.

3. Fashion: Style and beauty goes hand in hand with good fashion sense. From clothing to accessories, from makeup to earrings, pretty much anything goes in this niche. Clothing in itself is a very broad niche, think of wedding clothes to farming boots, the range is huge and worth your time.

4. Parenting: Raising kids of the Internet and Mobile generation isn’t easy. There’s online studies, apps that teaches and yet there’s games that needs to be blocked. For a parent, what to allow and what to stop is such a big issue. Add forceful outdoor times, off line study and book reading time etc. to the mix and parenting will seem so much difficult. This is where good parenting blogs come to the rescue.

5. Home and Garden: Maintaining a garden is fun, growing fruits and vegetables from the same garden is being self-sufficient. Home improvement is a huge sub-niche that needs to be carefully explored and covered in much detail. There are tools to review, plumbing to be fixed, and expert advice on home remodel to be delivered. This niche has a lot of potential.

6. Fitness: This is the New Year time and fitness goals are a top priority now. With the passing of Corona, more and more people are getting health conscious and they are setting up fitness goals. People look up the internet for good fitness advice all the time.

7. Relationship: This is a complicated niche with relations of so many flavors keep messing up and requiring advice every now and then. While fixing and maintaining a relation is really difficult, but for the blogger, it is a niche with so many potential and so much content can be produced in this niche.

8. Motherhood: Being a mother, covering week by week during the pregnancy time, then the sleepless nights that seem to last a lifetime – but time flies and the baby starts to walk and everything in the range of 3 feet’s in height becomes a potential danger. This is a delicate niche which requires careful handling, the topics and the articles need to be really well thought out as advice for a small baby or pregnant mother has to be really good.

9. Hairstyle: This does seem like a sub niche for beauty, but hair style is a huge niche in itself. There are hairs of all types to care for, style it to give tips to stop hair fall, there’s just too much to cover and write.

10. Photography: With the technology on the rise, the digital photography niche has grown in size. From travel photos to food photography, from nature to journalism, taking pictures isn’t just that simple, there’s so much more to it.

11. Interior Design: There are degree courses available for this niche which shows you how much information is packed here. It is technical too, as false ceiling and living room upgrades to kitchen remodel; everything seems to fall under this niche.

12. Self Growth: The good thing about the internet is that there’s everything already available and one can research their way to cover any niche. Self Growth is a complicated niche where good advice can really help anyone to develop themselves over time.

13. Entertainment: This niche has opened up in the last few years with the rise of OTT platforms and Netflix and Amazon Prime, the entertainment industry is no longer dependant on movie halls or popular heroes. Now people can easily stream in high quality shows and forget the rest of the complicated machinery which is required for creating huge films.

14. Men’s Fashion: When it comes to men’s fashion, there a whole new area of grooming from beard to moustache or wearing clothes and shoes.

15. DIY – Do It Yourself: This is where everything from crafts to regular stuff that you can do on your own fits in. There are tutorials that can be written, from home improvements to self help projects, anything that one can do by themselves fall under this niche.

16. Books: If you are a book reader, one who really reads as much as possible and then write and discuss about those books then this is your perfect niche. There are social sites on books so that readers can discuss their favorite books, recommend others to read books based on their interests again on the basis of books that they have read so far.

17. Women Fashion: just like men’s, women too have a lot to think and do, as far as fashion in concerned. From clothes to accessories, pretty much everything falls in this niche.

Just like any other niche, if you start to dive further down, you can easily break down each sub niche into further sub-niches and keep doing it till you find it almost impossible to add content to it. It is best to choose one of these sub-niches and stick to it, because there are plenty of content ideas that one can come up with for every niche that we have on the list.

Top 14 Pinterest Marketing Tips for 2023

Pinterest is a graphic targeted social media site that has more than 445 Million active people online on a monthly basis. This number is pretty huge for any social site, but this one is different because it is a niche site and can be categorized by several factors. This greatly makes this site targeted for various purposes, thus making it even more valuable.

Just like any other social site, the basic rules still apply, for example making an established and catchy profile helps. The categories and tags are mostly in the form of boards and pins where being relevant and quality of the content matters. The images matters more than the text, but in general, everything counts.

Here, we are going to discuss several tips to boost your Pinterest marketing.

1. Make a good profile: Just like any other social site, here too, the first step starts with creating the perfect profile. Fill up all relevant fields of your Pinterest profiles, including the link to your website, social media accounts, related hashtags etc.

2. Setup Relevant Boards: On Pinterest, setting up the boards is the most important thing to do. There’s pretty much no limit to the number of boards that we have. As long as we make relevant boards and add pins to them, and keep adding pins on them regularly, we can keep growing the number of boards.

3. Follow people on Pinterest: On social media, it is important to follow people so that they follow us back. If you are following relevant people then, in time, you will gain a following which is highly targeted and helpful in promoting your content.

4. Join Group Boards: Group boards are an amazing feature of Pinterest. Imagine a perfect world where someone else has setup these amazing, huge and helpful boards and now they are allowing you to add your own content to these boards in the form of pins. This is exactly that a group board does. As soon as you apply for a group board which is open for the public, and your request is approved by the board admin, you are free to start pinning on that board.

5. Schedule your Pins: Pinning when your heart desires is all right as long as you are doing it all for fun, but when it becomes result oriented, then plenty of things changes and one has to take a different approach. Sharing your pins at regular interval, spaces the content posting properly. This way, your content is consumed better and your audience isn’t flooded or the time line does not goes dry.

6. Event Pinning: Pinterest is a social site which is great for events, especially shopping events. The members of Pinterest does shopping research ahead of most shopping festivals, like Christmas, black Friday, thanks giving, new year etc. If you are able to add new pins targeting these events, you can get a lot of targeted traffic on these events days. Since other social sites show lower traffic levels on these events, Pinterest automatically becomes the go-to social site on shopping planning.

7. Share from other Boards: While it is fine to keep adding content that you create yourself, but there’s a limit on how much content you can make yourself. This is where you can share other people’s pins and get volume on your Pinterest boards. Now this isn’t like copying content from the internet, as the pins are already there on Pinterest, you are just re-pinning them on your own boards.

8. Use taller images: The preferred image size on Pinterest is the longer ones. Wider images do not do well on this site. Always look for images that are longer than they are wider. Feel free to edit your existing images and make them taller by either editing or mixing multiple images together.

9. Make good use of Canva: When it comes to editing images, nothing on the internet does better than Canva. There are plenty of free options available with Canva that improves the images and makes them look better. There’s picture, templates, graphics, shapes and pretty much everything that can be used to improve images.

10. Create and Share Infographics: This is an image based content that does extremely well on Pinterest. Infographics comes in all type of formats, but it is mostly in taller size which is a format that Pinterest likes. Infographics content is mostly text and graphics and all the text is added in the image, so the Pinterest users like it. Creating infographics especially for the Pinterest helps even more.

11. Text on the Image: On regular images, if you edit it and add some catchy text to it, it gets shared even more. The text should be readable and nicely presented and the image should be clearly visible, as long as this delicate balance is met, it will be shared heavily on the social media.

12. Stay Focused: Pinterest is a collection of images. These images are catchy, they are relevant to what you like and do – one can really start exploring the site and get side-tracked. It is important to stay focused so that the real concentration goes into the actual Pinterest marketing, not Pinterest browsing.

13. Run a Contest: On social media, if you want to build a following or get a lot of content shared, the best way is to start a contest giveaway. In the rules, make sure to mention that following and pinning is required as part of the contest rules. This way, any one participating in the contest has to follow and share.

14. Pinterest Trends: This is a secret area of Pinterest that shows what trends on Pinterest. There are plenty of filters that can be applied and a trend can be narrowed down so that we can target on the basis of the niche we are in.

Social media marketing mostly revolves around the top tier social media sites, where sites like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube takes the front seat. However when it comes to images, women audience, shopping research etc. Pinterest automatically becomes the go to place to get started. There’s plenty of ways to make the most out of Pinterest, but being genuine and creating high quality and unique content is a top priority.

Top 11 Easy to Implement Word of Mouth Marketing Tips

When a business, product or service is good, people start to recommend it freely to others because they have themselves benefited from it. This sort of marketing does not cost anything and since people selflessly and without asking for it, recommend it to their connections, this becomes the ultimate form of marketing.

However, just like anything else in life, good things don’t come to you naturally, they have to be built and gained. Here, we are going to discuss several ways in which we can boost this word of mouth marketing to our benefit and make the best of it.

Here are the top 11 Tips to Get Started with Word of Mouth Marketing.

1. Let users add content – The best way to get your customers and users to interact and get involved with your product and community is to let them add their voice. Be it social media, blog comments, forum sections, if you allow your customers to add content, they will get more involved and eventually promote the same on social media.

You can make quizzes; surveys etc. to get more feedback from your customers, but this can be taken a step forward by getting some creative media built for the sole purpose of user feedback. This can be in the form of mobile games which are both interesting to play and one can get good insights from the customers as well.

2. Testimonials – Users can give reviews and testimonials anywhere, it can be on your social media pages, direct emails, on social updates or even on review sites. Keep an eye open for these testimonials and whenever you find these, make sure to pull them on to your testimonial page and other section of your website so that others can easily check them out.

Getting organic testimonials and reviews are great but even if it is happening naturally, one should keep pushing their customers and users to give more feedback. These reviews are your digital assets and you should do whatever you can to get more of these feedbacks.

3. Incentivize Referrals – There are several ways to do it and the easiest way is to integrate a third party system for tracking referrals and then based on how many paid customers a user has referred, set some kind of rewards which can be both cash or some form of credits.

This is pretty easy to do with a custom referral link; all the user needs to do is to actively promote your stuff with his personalized referral link. The system will do the rest of the tracking and if the user is able to convert some paid users then he will be able to get something back.

4. Invest in your product – If you are the best in your niche then people will automatically promote and support you. This is the true form of word of mouth marketing, but for it to happen, one needs to keep working on their product and make sure that none in your niche is better than what you have to offer.

5. Ask for ratings – Always ask your customers to give you 5 star ratings and once someone does that, give the customer links to a number of places like Yelp, Facebook etc. where the user can post the same 5 start ratings everywhere. It is always better to get these ratings on-site, so that the customers are safe to be presented with star ratings on 3^rd party sites.

6. Use the News – Any current incident, especially if it is emotional or it is on your niche, then use it to your advantage. Try to align your product along those lines and build emotional connection and get the maximum benefit of the News item.

7. Use Influencer Marketing – Influencers are people with more followers or they have a greater reach on a specific niche. Whichever way you put it, an influencer can spread your message or product faster than normal people. If several of these influencers start to recommend your product then very soon the word of mouth marketing will spread like wild fire.

People value an influencer’s words more than normal people. This way, a positive recommendation from an influencer will propel your business like wildfire.

8. Use Social Media to your advantage – Social media isn’t all about posting well timed content and pushing it with the power of PPC. Real social media success requires a following that is strong and loyal. If there’s people on your profile that is loyal to you and are ready to share your content and stuff without questioning, then you are already cooking a winning recipe.

Start working on your social community, build it slowly and in time you will have a loyal following. If you keep valuing this community then overtime word of marketing will happen naturally because of your followers.

9. Allow people to talk freely – A community often fails because of stopping and moderating content and members. Give your community more freedom and let them say things straight from their hearts, even if it is negative, don’t remove them.

The best way to block and fight a negative comment or feedback is to respond to it right away and fix the problem.

10. Beta Testers – One of the easiest ways to make sure that you have enough people to wait for your launch is to have them try out your beta program. This way there will be people ready to test your new stuff and give feedback, after that they will share their feedback which you can further share on the social media and push the word of mouth marketing further.

These same testers will create the buzz around your launch date and talk good things about it since they have got the early access for which they are always thankful.

11. Free Features – If you have a free option on your signup check-list, no matter how limited the free version is, people are still going to use it. If it does serve its purpose then, even a really limited version and feature can work out. This way, the users will sign up and use the free version and promote it with the word of mouth marketing. This can be in the form of social media sharing and recommendation, perhaps even as a requirement to use the free version. Furthermore, several users will sign up for the paid plans eventually, making the whole process a success.

The best way to gain word of mouth marketing is to work on customer happiness and satisfaction. If your product is truly worth it, it will get word of mouth recommendations eventually.

23 Free Blogging Tools to try out in 2023

There’s plenty of tools on the internet which are available to the bloggers for free. Several of those have a free version available with limited features and a more comprehensive version which requires a paid upgrade. Either way, as long as the free features are worth using, bloggers will continue to use such tools for making blogging life easier.

These tools cover a number of niches like design tools, text and content tools or even SEO and PPC tools. Both new and seasoned bloggers need to use tools to simplify and speed up blogging activities. Thus we are covering some really important free blogging tools in this article.

Here’s the Top 23 Free Blogging Tools for 2023.

1. Canva: It is more than just an image editing tool, with images, styles, fonts and templates, Canva is a gold mine for bloggers who are looking for editing images for blog posts, social media updates, YouTube thumbnails etc.

Every platform and every action within a platform requires images of different sizes and resolutions. For example Pinterest prefers images that are longer than wider, while instagram prefers square images. These requirements are met exactly pixel for pixel in the Canva options.

2. Buffer: For social media scheduling, Buffer is one of the oldest and free tool available on the internet. It is easy to use and does exactly what it is meant to do, which is schedule content for social media sites and post them when you want them to be posted.

3. CopyScape: There’s several services that checks for content plagiarism but none is as effective as the copyscape. The free version allows checking URLs, so all you have to do is to enter the link of the page which you want tested for duplicate content and Copyscape will show the results.

4. Grammarly: When it comes to writing top notch content, this one tool can help in writing flawlessly without even the slightest of grammar mistakes. Content is more than just grammar though, and Grammarly fixes the way in which the content is presented, not just the grammar basics.

5. Quora: Quora isn’t a tool, it is a social network that works in the question and answer niche. For bloggers and marketers, this site not only presents with the best answers, but as a contributor of these answers, a blogger can drive home some targeted traffic by giving relevant links from the answers they contribute.

6. Linkedin Pulse: Linkedin is a massive social network that targets jobs, carriers and professional life. This site has a blogging option where a blogger can add regular content and build an audience. This traffic can be targeted to several sources and make the best use of it.

7. Trello: When it comes to organizing your blog or your business, a tool like trello helps you to keep track and progress of all aspects of your business. Any work in progress can be shown in a board, the works currently going on can be displayed in cards. It has the option to add comments and details so that several people from your network can give their feedback.

8. Google Drive: Keeping and sharing content across all your digital assets like laptops, desktops, cell phones etc. is a difficult task. But if you have Google drive, all you have to do is to upload the data in the drive and access it from where ever you have drive logged-in.

9. Google Trends: This is yet another amazing tool from Google that shows what is trending. They have a specific page for hot trends that shows the exact hash tags that are trending now. Based on those keywords, one can write targeted content and rank for terms that are currently getting a lot of searches.

10. MOZ: When it comes to checking incoming links, DA, links gained or lost from specific domains etc. Moz comes to the rescue. It has a platform full of tools for various blogging requirements.

11. SEMRush: SemRush too has a number of tools and the SERP checker is one of the best tools that this platform has.

12. MailChimp: There’s many tools that can be used for email marketing. MailChimp is one of the oldest and free tool which allows sending of emails to your email list and keep the list growing till the free limit allows.

13. Google Analytics: For tracking visitors to a website, people have been using this free tracker which is provided by Google.

14. WordPress: There’s plenty of blogging CMS available on the internet. Many of those are free, however, most blogs use the wordpress system as it is both free and easy to manage.

15. Slack: As a growing business, when your team grows further, Slack comes in handy for managing your team communication and activity.

16. Skype: Over the years, Skype has been used for online communications and since most people already have it installed so it becomes the go-to tool for communicating with people online.

17. Akismet: There’s many tools that can be used to stop spam comments in your blog. However, since Akismet is free and it already comes pre-installed with a wordpress blog, it naturally becomes the most used spam blocking plugins for wordpress.

18. Fiverr: For selling and buying online, people use Fiverr. In spite of their huge charges, this platform is free and easy to use, so people join it for getting started with freelancing.

19. Discord: Discord is easy to setup and plenty of people prefer it for online chatting and group discussions.

20. UberSuggest: For keyword research, especially the type that shows up in the Google keyword suggestions, this tool presents a comprehensive report of such keyword suggestions.

21. Facebook Groups: Groups of Facebook are free to join and they can provide a lot of targeted traffic if you share relevant information. This feature is very under used and if bloggers use it actively, it will help them greatly.

22. Medium: This is yet another blogging platform and several bloggers use Medium as their blogging destinations instead of posting content on their own blog.

23. AllTop: While AllTop isn’t exactly as big as it once was, but still it has a decent collection of blogs and media sites which are sorted by categories for easy browsing.

Free tools are always great to get started. As long as the feature available in the free version serves the purpose, it is worth using. As the requirements increases, one can opt for a new tool or if the budget allows, pay for the paid features and get a premium version of it.